Why are we fatter than ever?

Brits are fatter and heavier than ever before in history, with one in four classified as obese (with a BMI of between 30 and 40), a figure that has doubled in the past quarter-century, while a further third are overweight (a BMI between 25 and 29).Photo by
Minerva Studio

On April 2 1806, an intriguing advertisement was placed in The Times. It described a Mr Daniel Lambert, "the greatest Curiosity in the World who, at the age of 36, weighs upwards of FIFTY STONE". Mr Lambert, it went on, "will see Company at his House, No 53 Piccadilly, opposite St James’s Church - Admittance 1s".

An animal-breeder from Leicester, Lambert had been fit and strong in his youth, fighting a bear in the street on one occasion. It was, by all accounts, only when he moved to the relatively sedentary job of keeper at Leicester gaol that he dramatically gained weight.

He died at the age of 39, probably from an artery blockage, but not before having made a fortune from exhibiting himself, becoming, according to the Leicester Mercury in 2009, "one of the city’s most cherished icons".

Whether Lambert would attract the same attention today is doubtful. More than 200 years on, there are reportedly a staggering 100,000 Lamberts in Britain: the "super-obese", with a body mass index (BMI) of 50 or more, in need of triple-width aircraft seats and wardrobe-sized coffins.

That figure is just the tip of the iceberg. We Brits are fatter and heavier than ever before in history, with one in four of us classified as obese (with a BMI of between 30 and 40), a figure that has doubled in the past quarter-century, while a further third are overweight (a BMI between 25 and 29).

It’s not only our BMIs that are on an upward curve. Waistlines are expanding, too, especially as we get older and our metabolic rates slow. Recent figures show that 30 per cent of men and 55 per cent of women aged 60 to 70 have an unhealthy waist size, of 40in (102cm) and 34.5in (88cm) respectively.

Corpulence has always been with us, of course, although in former times it was associated with the rich. The lower classes, who lived on cheap staples such as bread, porridge and gruel with a little meat on Sundays, tended to be scrawny. These days, obesity is unequivocally linked to poverty, while the rich - especially rich women - tend to thinness.

Looking around the Daily Telegraph offices, for example, one wouldn’t be aware of any obesity "epidemic", and the same would be true of any gathering of an educated, metropolitan elite. That said, the middle classes shouldn’t grow too complacent. Figures from the Government’s National Obesity Forum show that weight problems are rising at all levels of society, and with them, an increased risk of life-threatening conditions such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

How did we get so fat? The answer is simple: we eat too much and move too little. Many experts now hold that this is not our fault, that we are no more gluttonous or slothful than our predecessors. The theory is that we are at the mercy of evolution and our genes have primed us to eat whenever food is available.

"In the past, the person with the feeble appetite would be the one who died in winter," says Ursula Arens, a dietitian and writer on nutrition.

"Everyone alive today is a survivor thanks to having fat, greedy ancestors. Which is why we can’t endlessly tell people to eat less - they come up against their own bodies telling them to eat at all times food is available."

And today, in contrast to the distant past, food is constantly available, plentiful and (notwithstanding today’s rising prices) cheap.

"One hundred years ago, food was phenomenally expensive - up to 70 per cent of the average income," says Arens. Thanks to government policy to maximise yields after the Second World War, "prices have been falling since the Fifties and food is now about 10 per cent of average earnings, excluding alcohol".

The entry of women into the workplace also radically changed the kind of food we ate: with wives coming home at the same time as their husbands, meals had to be easy, convenient and with a long shelf life. Increasingly, manufacturers added fat and sugar to this highly processed food to make it palatable.

Yet surely our grandparents were also fond of their fat and sugar, in the form of syrup puddings and spotted dick, not to mention the fatty meat and mounds of bread and butter people ate (aside from wartime)? Arens points out that in the past, with men going to the fields or the factory and women doing their own laundry and housework, they soon used up the calories. Food diaries from the Fifties show that whatever people ate, they followed a pretty strict regime of three meals a day, with little in between.

"If you were hungry in between meals, you ate an apple or a slice of bread. Chocolate was reserved for special occasions," she says.

Today, with food available all day every day, we snack at will on calorie-dense soft drinks, savouries, pastries and choc-chip biscuits. The habit is especially common among the young, with UK consumers between the ages of six and 24 being the biggest snackers in Europe.

And some snacks are bigger than others. "When I was a girl and we went to the seaside, I’d take a sandwich in a Tupperware box," says Dr Susan Jebb, professor of diet and population health at the University of Oxford. "Now you can get a three-course meal at a petrol station."

Increasing choices mean we are ever more food-obsessed and never bored enough to stop eating. A typical dinner of 50 years ago - lamb chops, say, with boiled potatoes - was pretty un-titillating; now we have Indian, Chinese, Mexican and Thai to constantly whet our appetites.

"If you had to eat the same food over and over, you would lose weight very quickly," says Professor Jimmy Bell, of the MRC Clinical Sciences Research Centre in Hammersmith.

Larger plates, cups and portions, especially of ready meals, are another factor: research by the British Heart Foundation found that in the past 20 years, individual chicken pies grew in size by 40 per cent and curry meals by 50 per cent.

Alcohol may be another factor - and not just in the form of the classic (male) beer belly. Women in particular have been drinking more over the past 30 years, usually in the form of wine, and there’s evidence that even a small amount of alcohol before or with a meal makes us eat more. And few people realise alcohol has a value of 7kcal per gram - second only to fat (9kcal/g) in energy density.

Then there are the marketing strategies - the meal deals, the three-for-two offers, the packaging and positioning, all designed to trick our brains into believing we want more.

Prof Paul Fletcher, a neuroscientist at Cambridge University, says that certain "reward centres" in the brain light up when we see images associated with food. "It’s like what happens when a former drug addict passes a house where he used to score. The brain is stimulated and he will have a sudden intense desire to do so again."

Why can’t we exert some willpower and eat less? It’s not so easy, according to Prof Jebb, scientific adviser to the Government on nutrition and co-author of the influential Foresight report on obesity in 2007. "The amount of time food has been plentiful has been the blink of an eye - we haven’t had a chance to evolve to catch up," she says.

Also "there is an asymmetry between our powerful biological drive to eat and an appetite-control system, in which signals of fullness are weak". Which is why in restaurants it’s hard to resist the dessert even when we are comfortably full.

Oddly, though, some surveys appear to show that we eat fewer calories than people did in the past (excluding the two world wars), although such anecdotal surveys are not considered that reliable.

And even if we are eating less, it doesn’t match our plummeting levels of physical activity. Car ownership, the loss of manual work, technology taking over household chores and "screen time" at home - note more recently the seductions of Facebook and Twitter - have all contributed to our increasingly sedentary lifestyles. The loss of school playing fields - 10,000 were sold off between 1979 and 1997 and a further two a month since the 2012 Olympics - are held to be another reason why one in 10 children is obese.

"Our grandparents may have had a higher calorie intake than we do, but they walked miles to the shops, did the laundry by hand and mostly had physical jobs, so they needed the calories," says Arens. "You don’t need them if you’re sitting in a call centre all day."

By contrast, the latest research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council found that nearly 80 per cent of the population is failing to hit key government targets (moderate exercise for 150 minutes weekly). And nearly one in 10 adults does not walk continuously for even five minutes a day.

"We all know we should exercise regularly but it’s difficult if you have kids and a full-time job," says Arens. And there are more attractive options for our limited leisure time: the choice between a gym session and a film with a friend is, frankly, a no-brainer.

The result, says Prof Jebb, is that on average we consume 25 calories a day more than we expend. It’s not a lot, but enough, as it accumulates over the years, to make us fat. "It’s not rampant gluttony but a minor error in our homeostatic balance that is the problem," she adds.

It’s not all bad news. Latest figures show that obesity among primary school children is levelling off (from 9.5 per cent to 9.3 per cent in 4- to 5-year-olds and from 19.2 per cent to 18.9 per cent in 10- to 11-year-olds).

The food industry is being "nudged" into bringing down levels of sugar and fat (as well as salt) in its products. And levels of physical activity are rising, with 14 per cent of adults in Britain now playing sport regularly, higher than the EU average of 9 per cent.

What else needs to be done? Ban cars once a week so that people walk more? Teach children how to cook proper food? Provide more sports facilities at the workplace and more time to use them? Cut portion sizes?

The Foresight report compares our obesity "epidemic" to climate change, arguing that it needs action at all levels. The problem, it says, has been at least three decades in the making - and will probably take just as long to reverse.

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